Page 1878 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 25 June 2008
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personal information or information injurious to the public interest, but there is no good reason to hide the bulk of the documents on the excuse of cabinet confidentiality. When Mr Stanhope came into government, he claimed he would not hide behind cabinet confidentiality. The Canberra Times, in its editorial of 10 June 2008, said:
The possible unravelling of a proposed $2 billion investment project requires the government to end the conjecture and come clean about the extent of its involvement. The blacked-out documents and the hesitant and contradictory performance of its senior bureaucrats demand it.
When the estimates committee requested documents from Mr Stanhope, his response was:
I am certainly not giving carte blanche to release a whole raft of documents …
Of the 1,754 pages of documents held by the Chief Minister’s Department on the issue, we have received only 239, and of these 105 have been censored, many heavily. Mr Stanhope’s department has taken a significantly less liberal approach to release of documents under FOI than has ACTPLA or the LDA. The LDA has only withheld 15 per cent, ACTPLA 78 per cent and CMD 86 per cent of documents.
ACTPLA and the LDA in their documents point to the government as being responsible for driving decisions on site selection. By contrast, the documents from the Chief Minister’s Department are censored and blacked out to within an inch of their life. (Extension of time granted.) The estimates committee was prevented from pursuing a line of inquiry when false information was conveyed about the involvement of Mr Stanhope’s department prior to August 2007. Mr Dawes said:
We did not become involved in that project until after a site had been selected ...
These comments were withdrawn in writing in letters received by the estimates committee on 5 June 2008, six days after the final scheduled hearing day for the estimates committee. Mr Stanhope has said he shoulders no responsibility for how the estimates committee was misled. He told ABC Radio on 16 June:
I’m not responsible for comments that officials make at Estimates.
On the same day, he refused to allow officials to appear without him to answer questions. Apparently, the Chief Minister is not responsible but he needs to be there to make sure they do not say anything that he does not like.
The documentary records show that the Chief Minister’s Department was involved before a site was selected in early August. The Chief Minister’s Department was involved since at least May 2007, when it received letters from ActewAGL’s CEO on 9 May and 22 May 2007 which were forwarded to it for preparation of Mr Stanhope’s response. Various documents indicate that CMD was clearly involved since at least June. Ken Douglas from CMD wrote to ACTPLA in June 2007 on the issue. I seek leave to table that document.
Leave granted.
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